TinShift

TinShift (Aka AtomicNumber22... it's never a good sign when developers don't know what their game is called) was an attempt at making a PvP only Early Access asset flip scam. As usual, it was a train wreck, featuring some ugly misuse of Unreal, a hazily slapped together and quickly aborted PvP arena shooter, and of course, despite having a broken dead game, a sales pitch and an Early Access push. It failed. SteamDB shows the game peaked at only 35 concurrent players, which is a pitiful number, and now the game has practically no players, with numbers around 5-6 per day, not enough to fill a server. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time! First up the game visuals are terrible, asset flip looking garbage with sloppy optimisation and visuals... controls are locked, the overall quality here is woeful. PvP gamers have literally thousands of games to choose from, hundreds of AAA games that are either free or cost next to nothing. Games have to actually offer something if they want to compete for players time. Part of the reason for the game failing was predatory, Pay To Win monetization under the guise of a planned "optional" (haha) cash shop. That isn't cool, and gamers hate that crap. The developers made the terrible mistake of launching a multiplayer only game in Early Access. This is almost certain to kill the game. Most gamers will evaluate a game only once. If they do so when the game is incomplete, they will check it out, then abandon it (just like the developers did). When (IF) the game eventually does get around to release, there will be no players, because the developers burned the first impressions through their faulty Early Access experience. Players who saw the game and didn't like it because it was incomplete [i]do not come back[/i]. Multiplayer games must have a large population if they are to go "viral" and succeed, especially without single player content to fall back on. Releasing a multiplayer only game into early access kills the game population, and thus the game, before the game even launches. The developers made the fatal, lazy mistake of believing that PvP, other players, would be an acceptable substitute for doing the difficult job of adding single player level design, storytelling, NPCs and other rich aspects of designed game content to the game. As a result of this choice by the developers, the game has little to no actual interactive game content. It's a little considered fact that the vast majority of PvP only, multiplayer only games [b]fail[/b]. Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable substitute for doing the job of game developers and building a game filled with content. PvP only games must have a [b]huge[/b] player base for them to "go viral" and succeed. But with no single player experience to add lasting value to a game, the developers instead chose to bet against all odds that their game would "go viral" without any actual reason for players to want to play the game. Predictably, they lost this bet. They seriously tried to charge $10 USD for this garbage, then abandoned that and opted for the cancerous MTX approach. Nothing in the history of this train wreck was done with the interests of gamers in mind. No money was refunded to anyone who paid for this in Early Access, before it went free, the "developers" simply pocketed all the money.